


Just Hold Me

by jashinist_feminist



Category: Naruto
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Kissing, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Romance, Romantic Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 02:47:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15524382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jashinist_feminist/pseuds/jashinist_feminist
Summary: Konan requests that Sasori join her in room one night. Sasori ponders on the meaning, bewildered by her intentions, then comes to appreciate her gesture.





	Just Hold Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shipcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipcat/gifts).



> I wrote this fic for my lovely Kitty, as I know how much she loves Sasori and Sasori pairings! there isn't much sasokona stuff, and both Kitty&I like to hc Sasori as asexual sometimes. previously, I had also discussed how I thought a sasokona relationship would pan out in one of my KLW posts, and this is what I decided.
> 
> Kitty, I really hope you enjoy this and that i've done both Sasori&Konan justice!

The paper butterfly fluttered before Hiruko’s nose as soon as Sasori arrived back at the Akatsuki headquarters. The brat trailed along in his wake, passing a piece of clay from one of his disgusting hand mouths to the other. Rain dripped from their Akatsuki cloaks in rivulets, and Deidara gave a miserable sniff. The doors slammed shut behind him, shutting out the rain, but not the gloom. They both stood in the half light, Deidara glancing around shiftily with ice blue eyes winged with eyeliner, and Sasori watching the butterfly flitting before Hiruko’s eyes.

“What’s that, yeah?” asked Deidara.

“Nothing for you to see,” Hiruko growled.

As soon as Deidara had turned the other way, presumably to try and provoke Itachi into a fight, Sasori reached out with Hiruko’s gnarled wooden hand to pick it up. Bringing it inside the privacy of the puppet armour through Hiruko’s mouth, Sasori reached out with his pale jointed hands. The butterfly fluttered, and then lay still in his palm.

Sasori opened each of folds, laying out the note, and stared. There was her cursive, flowing handwriting, that billowed across the page. Konan joined her letters tidily, lightly dotted her Is and Js, curled the points of her Ws, and crossed her Ts daintily. Sasori had come to know her handwriting almost as well as he knew his own, studying it in mission reports, wondering why it compelled him so. He held it beneath his grey-brown doe eyes, and scanned through the message.

Then he frowned.

_‘Please join me in my room tonight.’_

Immediately, Sasori wondered what in the world Konan was thinking. Of what she was, to use such crude a phrase, playing at? Konan knew very well that Sasori had ridden his body of all human emotions and feelings. Most of the Akatsuki knew, or at least suspected, that he had done so, if he had not yet graced them with the presence of his true form.

And of all the Akatsuki members, she knew the reasons _why_ better than any of them.

The useless _pain_ of wretched emotion, that try as he might, he had no control over. Then there was the prolonging agony of all of them, the way that even the good emotions turned sour and hurt, and then, _then_ , there was the sheer disgust at the absolute mess that human physical contact could be. Mingling bodily fluids, an exchange of invisible yet permeating germs, and then the overwhelming sensation of _feeling_.

And it was a feeling that grew too much, one that overpowered all other thoughts and sensations, that expanded until it invaded his very core, his sense of being and his sense of self. It was a feeling that slipped far too much into what made him Sasori and instead made him Sasori _and_ so-and-so.

It was too much.

It _hurt_.

If Sasori could, he would have shuddered.

The note gazed up at him, the white of the paper glowing even inside Hiruko’s defensive shell. Sasori gazed back in return, and wondered what he ought to do and how he should respond. He had never liked to keep people waiting, since he hated it so much himself.

Perhaps he was reading too far into it, Sasori thought to himself, once the initial surprise of the request wore away. That the connotations of physical passion that he invoked in the words was only from the expectations and norms of society around him, and not necessarily Konan’s request or what he knew of her character.

Sasori knew and respected Konan as an intelligent woman, one who was calculating and cunning, and one who knew as well as he did of how debilitating human emotion could be. Sasori had watched how she shut down her emotions behind a stoic façade, and was impressed at her ability to do so, having neither converted or changed her body as he had. He watched as she used emotions as tools to bend others to her will and that of the Akatsuki’s, and knew that she was a woman who knew better than to fall for shows of such things.

Perhaps all she desired was his company, and in which case, Sasori was more than willing to provide. Konan was calm, and of all the Akatsuki members there were, she was the most pleasant. The thought that Konan found him pleasant in response was flattering.

But then doubt rose again in his mind. Sasori knew she had been intimate before, that she had known a lover’s touch, and had made no secret or displayed any shame about it when they had stumbled upon the topic in a related conversation.

Maybe now, after all this time, she hungered for it again.

But she would not receive that from Sasori.

Sasori, who was cold and wooden. Stiff and unyielding. Heartless and cruel. Sasori, who had made himself so, out of choice, preference, perfection. No one in their right mind could possibly want to touch him, and it filled Sasori with a sense of glee that he told himself was not an emotion, merely admiration for art and penultimate achievement of becoming art itself.

The joints of his fingers wavered, holding the note as his eyes scanned it over and over again. _‘Please join me in my room tonight.’_

And yet, as heartless and unfeeling as Sasori believed himself to be, there was a hungering for her company too. It _was_ pleasant. _Very_ pleasant, in fact. In Konan’s company, he could just be. He could think about what he liked, do what he liked, and never feel like he had to compromise himself or alter his behaviour to please or accommodate hers. And Sasori believed she felt the same, that she knew that she could think and do as she pleased in his company, and never feel judged or have his expectations placed upon her. They didn’t even need to speak, sometimes they simply sat in silence, drawing comfort from the other’s presence.

There was something soothing about her presence, something calm. Maybe it was the royal blue tone of her hair. Blue was always meant to be a calming colour. Or the deep indigo blue of her favoured split tunic and leggings. Sasori had seen her without her Akatsuki robe whenever they relaxed in each other’s company; she working upon some paperwork for Pain, he perusing through a novel that Kakuzu had lent him in one of his more forgiving moods. He was sure that besides Pain, he was the only member who had.

Sasori longed for her presence, for her company and her conversation. It would be a balm to the irritation growing at the back of his head from listening to Deidara’s idle chatter all day. He would leave Deidara tonight, and let the younger boy annoy Itachi instead. And if Itachi had any sense, which Sasori was certain he did, then he’d impose Deidara on Hidan and let Deidara spend his energy on squabbling with the cultist.

With that, Sasori smoothed out the note, the intricate folds of the imprint of the butterfly lingering still, then tucked it inside his clock, just above his heart core. It was a convenient place to put it, that was all.

He marched Hiruko through the halls of the base, passing bolted closed doors with whispering occupants. _Itachi, Kisame, maybe,_ thought Sasori. He climbed another flight of stairs, passing more doors, with arguing occupants. _Kakuzu, Hidan, most certainly,_ thought Sasori. He reached another flight of stairs, and began the ascend, knowing the route to Konan’s room well enough.

Konan took one of the largest rooms in the base. The largest room belonged to Pain, but Sasori had never visited it, and did not care too. In Konan’s room, long windows opened from ceiling to floor, with white floating curtains draped across to afford her some privacy. Her desk sat overlooking the city, where she could see Amegakure in all entirety from her vantage point.

Sasori reached out with Hiruko’s arm, and knocked on the painted peeling wooden door.

“Come in,” the clear alto rang back, with little hesitation.

A wry smile spread across Sasori’s lips. _She knows I do not like to wait_ , Sasori thought to himself. He was momentarily touched by her consideration.

Hiruko’s arm pushed open the door. Sasori creaked the puppet forwards, lurching inside the room, and waiting until the door had creaked shut behind him. Once the bolt had slammed shut, and Sasori knew that they were alone, he allowed the mask on the back of Hiruko to rise. The puppet sank to the floor, sprawling his limbs out like a spider, as Sasori diminished his chakra strings.

He emerged, his red-haired true form unfolding itself and standing upright. He clamoured out, before turning to greet Konan.

Konan faced away from him as she sat her desk, a pen dancing over several pages as she worked. A few of the large windows were open, allowing a cold breeze to flicker around the room. Royal blue strands of hair swayed in the wind, and the flower tucked in her hair ruffled. Spatters of rain lashed across the window panes and across the exposed grey-planks of the wooden floor. The curtains hung limply, as they grew heavy with moisture.

“You should close the windows. You’ll catch a cold,” warned Sasori.

“I grew up here. I’m used to it,” replied Konan. She leant her forehead on one hand as the other wrote, her fingers entwinned with her blue hair. One finger was wrapping a lock of hair around her finger, curling it, smoothing it, then curling it again.

Sasori looked curiously at her. “How long have you been working?”

“Since this morning,” replied Konan.

“You’ll strain your eyes,” warned Sasori. He remembered how his eyes used to strain whenever he worked too long on his puppets as a child, and how Granny Chiyo would scold him. Now, his eyes no longer strained, but continued to see for as long as he needed to. Much better. _Perfect_.

“I’m almost done,” replied Konan.

“I received your note,” added Sasori, holding it out from inside of his robes. “How did you know I would return tonight? Did you want to see me?”

“I saw you and Deidara returning through the window, and I want your company,” Konan finished the page she was working from, and then rose from her seat. She inspected her hands, noticing a reddened lump on the smallest joint of her index finger, and inelegant blue splodges of ink staining her fingers. Sasori watched her nose wrinkle with displeasure.

Usually, he too would have been put off by such mess, but to his surprise, found the splodges somewhat amusing, especially on a woman as high of Konan’s calibre. Konan strode across the room, heeled sandals clacking on the stripped bare wooden floorboards. She lay her hands beneath the stream of water in a small basin that was surrounded by toiletries, and began to scrub her hands free of ink, running a bar of oatmeal-scented soap between her fingers so that the suds blossomed on her palms and the back of her hands.

“What did you want my company for?” asked Sasori.

Even with her back half-turned to him, he watched a small smile grace Konan’s lips, and the piercing beneath her lower lip winked in the low light. “Some actually intelligent conversation.”

Sasori couldn’t resist folding his arms and lifting his nose slightly. “Wouldn’t Kakuzu or Itachi also make promising candidates for that?”

Kakuzu and Itachi were tolerable, Sasori had decided, having spent long enough in their company to make his mind up, although both Hidan and Deidara would have disagreed. Kakuzu made an excellent associate, and they both had a wealth of mutual interests that allowed them to make use of the other’s abilities. And Itachi was relatively calm and quiet, didn’t argue about art, and was therefore non-offensive to Sasori.

“They would,” admitted Konan. She rinsed her hands beneath the running water, twisting the sink taps firmly off, then wiped them on a white hand towel beside the sink. Sasori glanced around the room, thinking how the room reflected her personal style, her mannerisms, her behaviour. Nothing seemed pretentious, nothing seemed out of place or here to impress. It was here because Konan wanted and needed it here. There was a sense of understated elegance brought to life. She turned to face him. “But…they’re not you.”

If Sasori’s heart had still been a heart and not a core, it would have fluttered. Instead, he stared impassively at her.

“And what do you want from me in particular?” he asked bluntly, deciding to have the matter over and done with quickly. Since, after all, he had never liked to wait or keep others waiting.

“I want you to hold me.”

* * *

Sasori stared blankly at Konan. His human form might have licked his lips in curiosity. But instead he stared forwards, unmoving, with no reaction.

“Why do you want that?” he asked.

“Because it’s nice,” Konan replied, with equal blunt force.

Sasori’s head twitched. “Why?”

“It just is,” said Konan firmly.

“I wouldn’t know,” admitted Sasori, even as he knew deep down it wasn’t strictly true. He remembered the warmth of his father’s arms, the tenderness of his mother’s, the way whenever he had a nightmare they would tuck him in their bed between them, so they lay as two pillars against all the night terrors and monsters of the world. He’d felt so…safe, in those moments.

After they left, he hadn’t felt like that again.

Instead, he remembered the clunky wooden feel of his puppet-parents, and their empty embrace. That’s what holding him would be like, and he wondered why Konan would wish to impose that on herself.

But Konan stared back at him, unwaveringly. “Then maybe now you will.”

“I won’t,” said Sasori. He wondered if that was bitterness stinging his voice. He was not bitter about giving up his humanity. Not in the slightest. He was proud; proud that he had shed his feelings and that no one could hurt him again. “I have no nerves, Konan. My limbs are wood. And wood does not feel.”

Konan lifted her hand, letting the sleeve of her robe fall back as she exposed the supple flesh of her forearm. She wiggled her clean fingers at him. “But I do.”

“Yes,” Sasori was forced to admit. “You do.”

She stood before him, unflinching and unyielding with her request and her opinion. Sometimes, with her stature and composure, Sasori felt like she was a puppet too.

But being a creaking wooden puppet just didn’t seem to suit her. She flitted above and beyond his reach, beyond his control or influence. There was no way he could imagine attaching chakra strings to her limbs and commanding her to do his bidding. And even if he did, she seemed too strong to smash into splinters as his puppet occasionally did on the battlefield.

Maybe she was pure white marble then. A beautiful marbled sculpted angel; raised on high above them all.

A sculpture, Sasori had almost decided. Then he thought of Deidara, and his silly exploding clay sculptures. They struck Sasori with an element of crudeness and a lack of finesse.

No, Konan was not a sculpture. She was her own person, her own art. Her body split and divided into thousands of sheets of paper, and paper was not marble. Konan flitted away as she pleased, remade her body into whatever she chose. Paper may have seemed fragile and flimsy, as Sasori had presumed at their first meeting, yet its edges could be razor sharp when the need arose.

A gust of wind blew into the room, one of the windows creaked even wider, and the papers on her desk took flight, swirling around the room in a wild flurry. Sasori did not lurch forward to collect them. It was pointless, the gust of wind had already taken them from any form of order. Instead, he tilted his head back and watched them swirl. Watching them in flight forced him to recall the day they met, how she had enticed him into the organisation, and how she had seemingly effortlessly defeated his Third Kazekage puppet singlehandedly.

Sasori shook his head, bringing himself back into the moment. He took several steps forward, fighting through the incoming wind to close the window, feeling only the force of the wind against his body, and not the tickle of the breeze. He knew that he could take the rain and cold without feeling a thing, without his body sickening, but Konan couldn’t.

His hand clasped the iron of the window latch, and then pushed back against the window. As soon as the panes clanged together, he bolted down the latch, before closing the others, one after the other, until the gust of wind invading the room ceased. The flowing curtains ceased their movement, falling limply against the glass. A few droplets of water gathered at the edges of the material. Sasori sniffed, hoping that someone in the Akatsuki base would have the sense to turn on the central heating tonight, and allow the room to dry out.

But now the curtains were closed, he and Konan were completely alone, locked off from the rest of the world. Behind him, he heard a rush of activity, as Konan used her jutsu to reorder the papers back into a tidy pile upon her desk. They flew around the room under her command in a vortex of movement.

It was beautiful.

It was art.

The papers laid back on the desk, and then Konan lowered her arms.

“I am tired,” she murmured, as blue hair fell across her shoulders. “I think I’m going to sleep. You don’t have to join me if you don’t wish to.”

Sasori watched her shrug out of the Akatsuki robe, revealing her tunic and leggings. She hung it upon an iron coat stand, with twirled pieces of metal for hooks. He continued to watch as she propped one foot up on her desk chair, sliding her heeled sandals from under her leggings, and then laying them beneath the coat stand. He wondered if he too ought to remove his Akatsuki robe, that by her revealing of herself behind the Akatsuki mantle that they were now somewhat unequal.

The need for equality won out. Sasori slid his robe off his shoulders, dressing down to the ninja pants and sandals that he wore underneath his robe. He unstrapped his sandals, the joints of his toes flexing when he lay them on the bare floorboards. It was quite unusual for him to undress, as his body did not dirty his clothes with secretions like a regular body did. Only a particularly messy conversation of a human body to puppet necessitated a change in clothes. Or personal preference to try a different or more practical outfit. Whichever came first.

Konan watched him, then one hand went to the neck of her tunic. The zip slid down, the fabric springing apart when the zip reached the swell of her chest.

“Konan-” Sasori fought to keep from raising his voice at the second-in-command of the organisation, knowing very well that he had little right to do so, but little other options to try and voice his concerns and growing unease.

Konan’s eyes glowed in warning, and she immediately caught his cautious glare. Her eyes narrowed, and her lip piercing wriggled, as her tongue played with it. “You think I would ask that from you? When I know that it’s not what you want?”

Sasori bit back a retort, realising that she was right. If wood could blush, he would be blushing now at his rush to conclusions.

“Do you really think I have such little regard for your feelings?”

“I don’t have feelings.”

“I think you do.”

“I don’t,” insisted Sasori. “But if I did…I would say that you’ve always been…most considerate. Most understanding.”

“I only wanted you to hold me,” said Konan. She held out her hand, which clutched her favoured pink silk nightdress. Sasori did not sleep, and Konan was an early-riser. Some mornings, Sasori had witnessed her sitting in one of the windows overlooking the city, her hair dishevelled, wrapped in the flimsy pink silk, watching the sun rise with a coffee in one hand, and the other tucked under her chin thoughtfully. He was certain none of the other Akatsuki members had seen her like that. “And I was merely changing into my nightclothes. Is there something sexy about that?”

Sasori would have pouted, if he could. “I know too well the nature and desires of humans, as much as they distaste me.”

“It doesn’t matter what they do, and what they want. It matters what we do, and what we want,” replied Konan, holding herself upright. She tilted her head curiously, and laid a hand on her hip. “But I am curious…you call my body art.”

“It is art,” said Sasori, remembering the elegant way her body divided and split into thousands and thousands of twirling papers. If he had been an ordinary man governed by base, primal instincts, and not a puppet, he would want to clutch the papers close, soiling them with his grimy hands and writing all over them with his emotions. But Sasori was content to watch them in their full beauty as a spectator, admiring her art and her beauty, but never claiming it for his own.

_Maybe that was what she wanted too._

She shrugged off her tunic, then rolled down her leggings. Seeing her fine form stretch and bend before him…Sasori once again recalled his offer to turn her into a puppet at their first meeting. She would have made a splendid one indeed, and that was usually the highest compliment that Sasori could offer someone.

He could imagine it even now, running his hands along the arch of her foot, her muscled calves, softer thighs, the curve of her hips, the dip of her waist, her forearms, biceps, collarbones, and slender neck as she laid on the table in his workshop, ready and waiting for him. He imagined those defined lashes dully brushing against her cheek, her hair uselessly spilling in a halo around her, as he worked at her body, making her perfect and immortal like him.

_But to have done so would have destroyed her own art._

The silk of her nightdress fell over her limbs, once again concealing her from his view. Sasori watched the way the pink flimsy material hugged her body, showing off the jewels that decorated her naval. He realised that he could happily watch her, admire her beauty from afar, but knew that to hold her close would feel like an invasion of her space, and a betrayal of his own.

He would not sleep with her, nor would he turn her into a puppet. Even if he tried, he knew that Konan would defeat him again, and again, a thousand times over if she had to. He would never mould her into his image, for to do so would be to lose the essence of Konan that he had come to…was it love? Desire? Companionship?

Sasori had no word for it, but what he did know, was that Konan did her thing, and he did his. For this moment in time, for whatever years of life Konan would be granted, whenever their paths crossed, they would be grateful to do just that.

“Coming?” called Konan.

Sasori followed her as her toes danced across the wooden floor, tapping out a rhythm of her footsteps. She leant over and tugged down the covers on her bed. He watched her crawl up onto the mattress, and then huddle under the sheets with almost a shiver.

She looked back up at him, questioningly. “Hold me?”

And Sasori debated his next course of action.

He didn’t have to stay if he didn’t want to.

Konan would understand.

But she was a woman who had very little joys in her life.

Her request was a small one, and one that was non-threatening, non-invasive. Truly, Sasori was curious about these feelings that stirred inside him, when he was so sure he had removed them. Maybe he couldn’t quite put a lid on the remnants of humanity in the heart core he had saved.

He climbed onto the bed. The mattress sagged beneath his extra weight. Konan looked up at him from where she lay, her painted fingernails curled into the fabric of the sheets. Already, Sasori caught the blossoming of hope and gratitude warming her features. He stretched out his limbs below the cover. He didn’t have a bed of his own in his room, preferring to use his room as a workshop of sorts, having no need for sleep.

It felt almost alien to lie in a bed once again, and brought back a few unwelcome memories of his room back in Granny Chiyo’s house. But he didn’t think of that place for too long, as he studied the white cotton sheets with the white silk coverlet. There were intricate folded patterns with the fabric embroidered on, and it felt so very Konan-esque, so very different to his room in Sunagakure, that Sasori quickly diminished the memory of his childhood home.

He propped up one of the pillows against the wrought iron headboard, and settled against it, knowing very well it would useless lying down as if he were to go to sleep. From this viewpoint, he turned his head to Konan’s bedside table, noticing a half-finished book with a folded angel tucked inside to hold her place and a porcelain pyrex mug decorated with detail of a painted blue rose. A small print of Konan’s pale pink lipstick kissed the rim.

Then he sensed her body shifting across the mattress, and the weight of her arm as it wrapped across his midsection, lying directly across the open part of his stomach where his wrapped coil lay. He felt the light weight of her head nuzzle against the wooden joint of his shoulder, and realised that she was…cuddling him.

 _She is holding me,_ he realised. And then he thought, _oh_.

Sasori let his arm wrap across her dainty shoulders, and his hand closed around her arm, his fingers caressing her smooth skin. Her eyes closed gratefully, and her expression relaxed.

As he had expected, Sasori could feel nothing, but he could see the warmth and the gratitude and appreciation in her face. Even if he couldn’t understand it himself, he could respect its need in others. It did not hurt nor pain nor make him feel uncomfortable in any manner. He didn’t feel overpowered or invaded. He was still Sasori, and she was still Konan. No fluids mingled, no germs exchanged, but they simply existed together, side by side, two individuals who sought solace and comfort in one another in whatever way they felt worked best for them.

She had been right.

To hold her in his arms like this…such a simple, throwaway gesture from him, but one that clearly meant a lot to Konan.

“Of course,” he whispered in her ear, letting wooden lips drift across her skin, planting kisses he couldn’t feel but he knew that she could upon her cheek.

Tonight, he would sit and hold her for as long as she pleased, even if that meant watching her sleep through the long and dark hours of the night. There were other tasks he would otherwise be attending to, but they could wait for now. Perhaps he would read that book that lay on the bedside table and see what kind of literature intrigued her so. Or even simply watch her breathing, watch her eyelashes flutter against her cheek, her lips gently parting.

One jointed finger wrapped itself in a strand of blue hair, curling it, then smoothing it out, before curling it again.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed my first ever sasokona...how did I do? I worked hard to try and get their dynamic "right" if that makes sense, but there was so much depth here to explore I couldn't possibly explore all of it.
> 
> comments, concerns, questions, fire away! i'm happy to accept constructive criticism, as long as its polite&respectful. I'm grateful for short or long comments, and love to talk <3


End file.
